In partnership with Expertise France, CCI B\u00e9nin has set up the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Digitalisation Project, better known as E-Tchit\u00e9. Its starting point came from experience: businesses that had already invested in digital tools and communication technologies withstood the Covid-19 crisis much better than others. The programme now aims to spread that lesson widely.<\/p>\n
The name itself says who it is for. \u201cTchit\u00e9\u201d \u2014 trade, business, in everyday language \u2014 combined with the \u201ce\u201d of digital: the aim is not to turn small businesses into start-ups, but to equip traders, craftspeople and women processors with what technology offers that pays off most immediately for them. The nuance matters, because it explains why the programme reaches thousands of businesses where conventional innovation schemes reach a few dozen.<\/p>\n
In practice, E-Tchit\u00e9 trains Beninese MSMEs to build their presence on social media, a cheap but effective channel to get known and increase sales. Participating businesses are also helped to create their own website and to digitise their administrative tasks and customer follow-up. The programme is coordinated by CCI B\u00e9nin through its focal points in the country\u2019s six economic regions.<\/p>\n
This regional presence is not an organisational detail. Benin\u2019s digital divide is as much geographical as generational: a trader in Parakou or Natitingou does not have the same access to training, service providers and connectivity as an entrepreneur in Cotonou. Deploying focal points in the six economic regions means accepting that digitalisation cannot be decreed from the capital.<\/p>\n
For a micro-enterprise, the return on investment of digital is measured on three levels. The first is commercial: a well-kept business page extends the customer base beyond the neighbourhood and word of mouth, at an acquisition cost close to zero. The second is administrative: digital tracking of income and expenditure produces, with no extra effort, the basic accounts that banks and funding schemes require.<\/p>\n
The third level is the most underestimated: traceability. A business that takes payments by mobile money and records its sales builds, month after month, a history of cash flows. This history is today the data most sought after by microfinance institutions and lending fintechs, which can base a loan decision on it where a total lack of information made any financing impossible. In other words, going digital means becoming bankable.<\/p>\n
By the end of 2023, the E-Tchit\u00e9 programme had already supported 599 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises<\/strong> in Benin in their digital transformation, through the focal points of the six economic regions<\/strong> of the country \u2014 a momentum that echoes Ak\u00e8da\u2019s own mission: giving visibility to local and diaspora entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The classic mistake is wanting to do everything at once: website, online shop, paid advertising, management software. For a business of two to ten people, the effective sequence is much more modest and unfolds over a few months.<\/p>\nWhere to start if you run a small business<\/h2>\n
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